“Without swift, transformative action, humanity risks a 3°C rise in global temperatures, rampant pollution, and catastrophic biodiversity loss.”–GEO-7
Oppressive heat. Species extinctions. Pollution-choked skies. Mushrooming environmental crises.
This stark vision of the decades to come unless dramatic steps are taken, is detailed in the seventh edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7), published by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
The 1300-page report is titled A Future We Choose: Why investing in Earth can lead to a trillion-dollar benefit for all. It finds that climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, desertification, and pollution and waste have taken a heavy toll on the planet, people and economies and already costing trillions of dollars each year. If governments continue to drag their collective feet, billions of people will face an uncertain future, especially those in the developing world.
“The Global Environment Outlook lays out a simple choice for humanity: continue down the road to a future devastated by climate change, dwindling nature, degraded land and polluted air, or change direction to secure a healthy planet, healthy people and healthy economies. This is no choice at all,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director.
Prepared by 287 multi-disciplinary scientists from 82 countries, GEO-7 is the most comprehensive scientific assessment of the global environment to date. It shows what is likely to happen to our planet by 2050 if nations continue to pollute, pump out greenhouse gasses and destroy natural spaces.
These are some of its key findings.
Crippling heatwaves. Planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions are expected to rise to 75 billion tonnes a year by 2050 – a nearly 50 per cent jump from today. This will destabilize the climate and lead to a surge in heatwaves, which are expected to affect nearly everyone on Earth – some 9.2 billion people – by 2050. Almost no corner of the planet will remain untouched by extreme heat.
Destructive resource extraction. By 2050, humans will be taking 165 billion tonnes of raw materials from the Earth annually. This represents a more than 60 per cent jump from 2020. GEO-7 says the extraction of all these metals, minerals and fossil fuels will destroy many natural spaces, worsening climate change and feeding biodiversity loss.
Economic decline. Climate change alone is expected to cut 4 per cent off global gross domestic product annually by 2050. As temperatures rise and the crisis deepens, that number will rise to a staggering 20 per cent by 2100. That would be just a little less than the contraction the USA suffered during the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s. The downturn will be magnified by the effects of pollution and the disappearance of nature. The poor will suffer the most from this economic upheaval and the gap between them and the rich will continue to widen.
Air pollution. GEO-7 foresees a slight drop in air pollution by 2050, but increasing urbanization means that the absolute number of people exposed to airborne pollutants will rise. By 2050, 4.2 billion people will regularly inhale dangerous levels of one particularly problematic substance, PM 2.5. The report estimates that air-pollution-related deaths will cost the global economy US$18-25 trillion through 2060.
Lost ecosystems. The world will lose 1 million square kilometres of forests, peatlands and other natural spaces. This is largely due to the expansion of cropland needed to feed a rising global population with a growing taste for meat. Because of the loss of ecosystems, the planet’s mean species abundance – a single number that captures the diversity and distribution of life – is expected to drop 3 per cent.
Floods and droughts. Climate change, left unchecked, will expose about 1.1 billion more people to heavy rains and an additional 900 million people to intense drought by 2050. This climactic one-two punch will help push up to 132 million people into poverty and put another 24 million people at risk of hunger by 2040. By 2050, 3.3 billion people – one third of the planet – will face water stress.
Tipping points. GEO-7 warns that the world is approaching a series of climate-related thresholds from which there may be no return. The Greenland and Western Antarctic ice sheets could collapse, causing sea levels to rise 10 metres. Thawing permafrost could release massive amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, supercharging warming. The Amazon rainforest may wither into a savannah, depriving the planet of one of its most important carbon sinks. Nearly every warm-water coral would disappear, devastating undersea ecosystems and threatening fisheries around the world. Even ocean currents and the Jet Stream could be affected, throwing the climate into disarray.
Time is tight. As serious as the situation is, the Earth’s future is not written in stone, GEO-7 argues. There is time for humanity to address climate change, nature loss and pollution. But it will take urgent and unprecedented changes in how countries govern their economies, handle materials and waste, generate energy, produce food, use raw materials, and treat the environment.
| “All life on Earth, including humanity, is facing an unprecedented threat, represented by the convergence of human-induced global environmental crises: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of biodiversity loss, land degradation and desertification, and the crisis of pollution and waste. These crises are interlinked and mutually reinforcing, pushing planetary systems towards uncharted territory where there is a growing likelihood that several tipping points may soon be irreversibly crossed. Despite numerous political commitments and repeated calls for action, the world is still not on track to meet internationally agreed objectives for responding to these crises.” -GEO-7 |
(This article includes material provided by the United Nations Environment Program.)
Thanks for the heads up on this UN report. It’s an important report, although, like so many other similar reports and journal articles about biospheric degradation, vague abstractions, arm-waving and motherhood declarations dominate. Empirical evidence of environmental crises has never been lacking. What is invariably lacking in reports like this and in scientific articles is an understanding of why these crises are intractable under the current world-dominating socio-economic system. Most or perhaps all recommended actions (such as in the “pithily” titled Ch.14, “Solution Pathways for the Transformation of Economic and Financial Systems”) would go a long way to solving these many crises, but why are so few solutions implemented, altered beyond recognition or significantly watered down? Ooooo, that’s a tricky question with serious political implications that we can’t really tackle…let’s just limit ourselves to nebulous admonitions like “the world is still not on track to meet internationally agreed objectives for responding to these crises”. Who do you mean by “the world?”..Oh, forget it. Why should we be surprised? After all, the terms of reference of GEO-7 are spelled out in the report’s subtitle: “Why investing in Earth now can lead to a trillion-dollar benefit for all”.
Good comment! And good point regarding “investing in Earth now”! In the reality, what they call “investing in Earth now” leads to benefits for a handful of groups with vested interests not “for all”. I guess this partially answers your rhetoric question “Why these crises are intractable?”